Yep these operations are going to be disasters. Huge plumes of waste silt, noise pollution, and permanent destruction of ecosystems whose role were don’t understand.
problem is, you'll never make these people happy. o&g? emits carbon, must go. cobalt for batteries? tears up the congolese landscape, must go. seabed recovery? messes with ecosystem, must go.
to be clear, i'm not trying to preclude cleaner alternatives. just saying there seems to be a rising idea that basically no level of anthropocene change is acceptable and we must retvrn to communes and mud huts or something. some folks need to quit letting the perfect be the enemy of the good
even if you agree with the almost inevitable conclusion that we should simply use less, you must recognize the political reality that almost no one is willing to suffer a substantial downgrade in standard of living. increased buy-in to the energy transition is largely due to promises that we can continue living how we are, tolerating what impact is left and mitigating costs with a combination of technological innovation and making "the rich" pay
“Downgrade” is an understatement, people always idealize living “in the field” until they need an emergency surgery, then all of the sudden the cheap availability of plastics is great.
That means there's hardly any penalty or price for polluting and destroying sensitive ecosystems. And since companies treat fines like operational costs, these companies will be financially incentivized to mine, pollute, and destroy the seabed, even for questionable gains.
And say there will be some organizations bothering and protesting, they will be disregarded as "green climate weirdo's" by populist right-wing governments in the West.
I also lived near the Alabama gulf coast and had friends that lived on the coast. Those globs of oil washed up on shore for a long time, years if I'm not mistaken. I don't know if there was any good research done to see if the environmental impact was better or worse but it would be interesting to see how it would have compared.
The PR value was huge though. Its amazing how quickly the popular sentiment can chill out when the problem is no longer easily visible.
I'm not sure it will be 'hidden' (the research projects are not going away) so much as yet another case of competing interests within governments, where the environment gets sidelined for the sake of an hypothetical future magic money tree.